


Quicksilver Express

by Amuly



Series: Marvel's 1872 [4]
Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Western, Character Study, Gen, Horror, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro runs supplies between the town of Rescue and the East. What happens on the road in the dark isn't anything worth mentioning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quicksilver Express

The wind whipped around Pietro, tugging at his goggles, biting through his coat. He ignored it in favor of pulling a small device from his pocket. It looked like a pocket watch, but the face of it wasn’t a circle of times. It went by fives, up to fifty—not that Pietro had ever seen the hand hit that high. Not that he ever looked at his Stark-Speeder, when he might have been going that fast (speed o’meter: that’s what Sheriff Rogers said they should call it).

Holding steady at thirty-five, pushing forty on down hills. Pietro pulled a second device from his pocket—an actual pocket watch, this time. Glanced at the time, glanced at the sky. Dared a glance behind him, at the setting sun. Squinted ahead, through the night he was racing into. Next post was another ten miles. He should slow the horses, as the light faded. He flicked the reigns, urged them faster.

He switched horses and kept going, another hour, another two. Darkness was final now, from horizon to horizon. He wasn’t close enough to the Mississippi for the roads to be getting any better, yet. Reluctantly Pietro slowed his horses to a trot. An hour, two hours later he hit the next post.

“Staying the night?” the kid tending the horses asked.

Pietro pulled out his pocket watch, turning it until it caught the light of the lamps on the outpost. He shook his head. “Another hour, another two. Then I stop.”

The kid squinted up at the sky. “No moon. Horses might trip over themselves.”

Pietro shook his head as he led the two fresh horses to his carriage. “No. They won’t.”

Another hour, another two. Still not close enough to the river for the roads to be any good. Pietro pulled the horses up, tethered them. Made a small fire and cooked some tinned beans on top of it. He ate, body nearly curled around the fire as he scanned the road for other travelers or animals. Or whatever else crept to in the dark, this side of the Mississippi.

* * *

“Do you even eat on the road?”

Pietro smiled into his stew, bowl covering half his face as he slurped it down noisily. As he set it down he looked to his sister who was hovering.

“Stop hovering.”

Wanda shook his hand away from her and continued to hover. “I have a pie in the oven for dessert. Two, because I know you’ll have a full one yourself.”

Ripping a piece of bread from the loaf, Pietro spooned some of the stew onto it. He sighed as he ate it, flavors of his sister’s old-world cooking bursting on his tongue.

“I eat.”

He didn’t bother to tell her that the food on the road didn’t taste like this. That somehow, contrary to anything regarding sense, the further east he traveled the farther away from home he felt. That Wanda was the old country, here, in the west. He didn’t tell his sister this as he spooned up another mouthful of stew and sighed, eyes drifting closed and stomach full.

* * *

The Mississippi roared loud beneath his wheels, the thrum of his horses’ hooves swallowed up into noisy silence. Pietro flicked at the reigns, urging his team faster. Behind him, the West whispered, nipping at his heels. His eyes were forward, eastward, fixed on the end of the bridge far away ahead of him. He couldn’t look back, wouldn’t look back, out of superstition or fear or truth, buried beneath it all.

As he raced across the bridge Pietro’s eyes drifted, once or twice. There: movement, under the bridge? Pietro shook himself, looked forward. Tendrils, groping hands, calling after him. Dragging him back. The reigns flicked, the horses huffed. They were at a gallop, now: racing, racing, racing over the bridge, racing into the east. The Mississippi was overwhelming, the thrum of hoof beats reduced from sound to sensation. An itch over his ear, on his shoulders, pinching his neck. Pietro shrugged his shoulders, looked forward. The West was calling, the West was whispering, the West crawling up with tendrils from beneath the bridge, behind the Mississippi, telling him to go back. Stay back.

The horses broke over the bridge at a gallop, hoof beats an abrupt crescendo as they hit the east side of the road. Pietro pulled them up to a trot, then a walk, letting them catch their breaths. Shaking, Pietro finally allowed himself to look over his shoulder. Behind him, the bridge. Beyond that, the pre-dawn darkness of an unsleeping West. In the dim light of morning rising over the east, Pietro thought he saw something out there, waiting for him in the dark. He sniffed, sneered. He’d be back, soon enough. It could have him back then.

* * *

Pietro toed at the device: one seat, three wheels, trying so hard at being slick and streamlined but failing on both counts. Pietro eyed up its creator, who was scratching his mustache off to the side, one eye closed as he examined his contraption. The similarities were noteworthy.

“You should give it up as a bad job,” Pietro observed, accent slipping out now and again. He frowned, adjusted the feel of the words in his mouth. Too much time spent around his sister and they started to sound like each other again.

“What? No! This:” Mr. Stark gestured emphatically at his device, both hands outstretched to you. “ _This_ is the future.”

“You’ll never move faster than a train.”

“Trains need track,” Mr. Stark observed darkly.

“Wagons need road,” Pietro pointed out.

“Roads are cheap. Roads can be as simple as tamped down dirt. Maybe some gravel. Even cobblestone and brick are cheaper than rail lines. Last longer, too. Metal rusts, metal decays.” With a dramatic gesture, Mr. Stark flipped on his device. It came to life, body thrumming with electric potential. Pietro took a step back from the power inside the machine. It made Pietro nervous.

Mr. Stark had no such nerves. He paced around his device, expression mad intensity, like a saint in church. “Just imagine it: a carriage without the horses. No mouths to feed, no tongues to water, no lungs to grow winded.”

Pietro circled the small cart, examining the seat, the engine thrumming with life. He tapped at it with his foot. “Except this is not true, is it?”

Mr. Stark frowned. Pulled irascibly at his mustache. “Which part?”

Pietro waved one hand. “All of it. Look, here: you must feed it. Here: it drinks water.”

Mr. Stark’s mustache twitched. “Well, sure, that’s the cooling unit. And that’s the charging port.”

Pietro eyed Mr. Stark. “Food and drink, yes?”

Mr. Stark grumbled and snapped a dial on the contraption. It whispered into sleep once more. “Not the same. You wait. One day, roads will be choked with these things. Horses will have to move to the side just to make way for them.”

Pietro snorted. “If only we were all men of such vision.”

“Here, take the new mix for the horses. They’ll go even faster, even longer, with this.” Mr. Stark waved Pietro to follow him as he turned back to his house. “And your wagon will be ready to go at first light. Just a couple changes to it.”

“The wheels will stay on this time, yes?” Pietro asked, seriousness of the question belied by the smile in his voice.

Mr. Stark growled as he stomped toward his barn. “Yes, yes. Er: maybe. I _did_ make some modifications to the wheels. Lighter, stronger. Tell me if the ride is smoother? I think it is, I’m using a new curing process for the rubber. Flexible but durable: should give you a smoother ride but with even less wear on the wheels themselves.”

“More out of less; you are always trying for this.”

Mr. Stark shrugged as they headed into the barn. “Would you rather I get less out of more?”

* * *

The sun set in front of him. Pietro chased it, horses flying in front of him, carriage rattling beneath him, unburdened of things to sell, burdened with things bought. The Mississippi was a distant memory, left behind him an hour ago, its roar long-faded from his ears. All that was left was the _thrum thrum thrum_ of his horses’ hooves over packed earth, the _whirr whir whir_ of his carriage’s wheels.

Pietro cut right on the reigns, holding until the horses turned with him. This road took him alongside a train track, extending before them on the long, flat horizon line until the two lines met at an infinity far in front of him. The whistle of a train engine. Pietro didn’t look back, didn’t look east. His horses flew.

The train roared out of the east as it passed him, overtaking his carriage and horses easily on this flat terrain. Pietro kept his eyes forward, watching the sun as it sunk lower and lower on the horizon. He raced that line, raced the train, horses’ hooves suspended in air for a second, a hay-second. They flew in those moments, and Pietro held his breath every time. Imagined if he held his breath enough, just right, they’d take off. They’d be free of the road, the track. Constraints of hunger and thirst. The horses galloped. Hooves suspended. Breath held. Then back to earth, four hooves and four wheels pounding, Pietro grounded by his grip on the reigns.

Night fell. The sun lost its battle. Pietro lost the race. The darkness rushed in, filling the space where light had left vacant. Pietro felt it swell up around him, envelop him. He gasped, letting out a breath held too-long, as he felt it. The wild, wild West and its creeping darkness. Welcoming him back. Welcoming him home.

The train disappeared, swallowed up by the night before him. Pietro chased it, horses flying along beneath him. His eyes strained against the darkness, watching for- His ears strained against the darkness, listening for-

Pietro brushed down the horses at the next outpost. “Staying the night?” the kid tending the horses asked.

Pietro stared straight ahead, into the west. “Another hour, another two. Then I stop.”

Another hour, another two. He pushed the horses into the West. Out there, where the creeping darkness waited for him. Out there, where something laughed in the night. Out there, where his sister cooked dinner with spices from the old world, humming tunes from their childhood. Out there, where Mr. Stark’s gas lamps glowed, steady and sure, straight as only man-made lines could be.

Pietro flew West. The darkness barely touched him.


End file.
